Picture of a skateboard.I remember when I was a kid, sometimes you'd give a girl a ride on your bike. She could sit on the handlebars or side-saddle on the main bar. If you had a book rack, she could sit on that too which was really nice because she'd put her arms around your waist. Two teens met in front of my house as I sat at the computer working. He had his skateboard and as she approached, he showed off a little. As she walked up to meet him, and the musing began...


Picture of a rooster pheasant on snow.It is the day after Christmas sometime in the late 1990s. We are heading home from northern Wisconsin back to Illinois and my wife Margaret is driving the pickup. There are two dogs in the cab and I'm half dozing, drowsy from the holiday excitement, one last overstuffed meal from mom's kitchen, and lack of sleep. We top a rise and you can see for a good two miles. Ahead on the right is a large field with a truck parked in it, some one hundred or so yards from the road. Two people stand behind the truck wearing orange vests and they are obviously going hunting. As we draw close at seventy plus miles per hour, the muse begins to write...